The EU Copyright Directive: Round 2

The EU Parliament has now voted in favour of an amended version of the Copyright Directive. The original draft directive had been rejected by the Parliament in July 2018, primarily due to criticism of two key provisions, known as the "link tax" (Article 11) and the "upload filter" (Article 13). Following substantial revision of these provisions, the Parliament has now accepted the draft directive, although the directive will be subject to a final vote in January 2019.

Article 13 of the original draft directive placed an obligation on online platforms such as YouTube and Facebook to monitor content uploaded to those platforms, and to block content that infringed copyright. In practice, the volume of content uploaded every day would require the use of some form of artificial intelligence. Following widespread criticism of this proposal, Article 13 has been amended and now places on obligation on online platforms to work with copyright owners to prevent users from